Wrap with Love

Heather Smith and her team of knitters have helped send hundreds of blankets all over Australia and the world to communities in need through the Wrap With Love organisation.

She joined Wrap With Love over 30 years ago and co-ordinates knitters from Kenthurst Community Craft Group and took over from Jacque Peberdy at Wesley Uniting Church Castle Hill.

The hard-working volunteers have been knitting squares to be made into blankets for years, completing over 50 wraps a year.

Margaret Pritchard, who stitches the knitted squares into a blanket, spends about a week doing each one and has completed over 600 wraps since 2012.

Every wrap is made up of 28 squares each measuring 25 cm by 25cms (10×10 inches) and takes about 150 hours to complete. Just this month Heather packed up and delivered 30 wraps to the Wrap With Love warehouse in Alexandria.

As well as going overseas the wraps are also donated to local charities including Peppercorn Services working with people in need in the Hawkesbury region, Dr Steve Burroughs Foundation working with Aboriginal communities, Project Kindness and Sister to Sister to name a few.

Wrap With Love works with over 40 nondenominational and non-political aid agencies to ensure that the wraps are distributed to people in greatest need in Australia and overseas and is currently working with Australians Knitting For War Affected Children to get wraps into Syria.

Wrap With Love was started by Sonia Gidley-King in1992 after she watched anews program about the civil war in Mozambique. She decided it was important to give something to people who had lost everything and so put her cupboard full of leftover wool to good use and started knitting squares with her friends.

It was that year that Heather read about the organisation and decided to help. She’s lost count of the number of squares she has knitted over that time.

“It’s very good therapy,” she said. “You are doing something useful and it benefits you and those that receive them. Lots of people tell me they love to knit the squares, it calms their mind and that’s important. In previous years some (of our blankets from this area) have gone to Afghan refugees, Trauma groups and people in the Tamworth floods.”

Volunteers range in age up to 90. There are Wrap With Love knitting groups in several local libraries and community centres. Wool and yarn can also be donated.

In the past 23 years Wrap With Love has sent more than 400,000 Wraps to people in over 75 countries, including Australia

To find out how to join a local group, drop off squares or donate yarn visit the website www.wrapwithlove.org or email [email protected]